Neo-liberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class. In this book Guy Standing introduces what he calls 'The Precariat' - a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, stable social protection or protective regulations relevant to them. They include migrants, but also locals. Standing argues that this class of people could produce new instabilities in society. They are increasingly frustrated and dangerous because they have no voice, and hence they are vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties. He outlines a new kind of good society, with more people actively involved in civil society and the precariat re-engaged. He goes on to consider one way to a new better society - an unconditional basic income for everyone, contributed by the state, which could be topped up through earned incomes. This is a topical, and a radical book, which will appeal to a broad market concerned by the increasing problems of labour insecurity and civic disengagement.

About the Author

Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath. He was previoiusly Professor of Labour Economics at Monash University and before that Director of the Socio-Economic Security Programme of the International Labour Organization. He is co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network. His recent books include 'Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship' (2009) and 'Beyond the New Paternalism: Basic Security as Equality' (2002).

Prizes

This book introduces the Precariat - the growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, doing work without a past or future. This book considers why the Precariat is growing, what fears it faces, what political dangers it represents and what would make a politics of paradise to overcome them.

Table of Contents

Introduction | The Degradation of Work as Labour | The Global Transformation and the Precariat | How the Precariat Took Shape | The Dangerous Class | Occupational Citizenship: The Regulatory Imperative | Restoring Freedom: The Precariat's Dream | Reviving Equality

Reviews

This is an important book. Citizen's Income Newsletter Guy Standing provides an incisive account of how precariousness is becoming the new normality in globalised labour markets, and offers important guidelines for all concerned to build a more just society. Richard Hyman, London School of Economics, UK This important and original book brings out the political dangers, so clear in contemporary America, of failing to address the insecurities of the Precariat. It also suggests the way forward: a reconstruction of the concept of work. Eileen Applebaum, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington DC, USA Over 90% of workers in India are informal, poorly paid, without any economic security. Guy Standing combines vision with practicality in outlining policies that are urgently needed to provide security to workers such as these around the world. Renana Jhabvala, Self-Employed Women's Association of India Standing has produced a well-informed and important book investigating, for the first time in a comprehensive way, the direction in which global economic security is moving in the 21st century. The book is packed with statistics presented in a very readable form and drawing on extensive published research. It is a compelling account of economic insecurity... Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation